James A.

Moody
Attorney and Counselor at Law
1101 30th Street, N.W.
Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20007
Voice: (202) 944-8600
Fax: (202) 944-8611
Email: moodyjim@aol.com

December 4, 2016
BY ELECTRONIC AND REGULAR MAIL
Frederick J. Ryan, Jr., Publisher
Martin Baron, Executive Editor
Craig Timberg
The Washington Post
1301 K Street NW
Washington DC 20071
Re: Request for retraction of: Russian propaganda effort helped spread fake
news during election, experts say (November 24, 2016), for public apology, and
for opportunity to respond; Document and ESI Preservation Notice.
Gentlemen:
I write on behalf of my client, Aurora Advisors Incorporated (Aurora),
which publishes the finance and economics website Naked Capitalism
(www.nakedcapitalism .com) to request that the article by Craig Timberg,
Russian propaganda effort helped spread fake news during election, experts say
(Fake News) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russianpropaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-expertssay/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html] published
by the Post on Thursday, November 25, be immediately removed from your
website and all web-accessible archives. Fake News contains extremely damaging
false allegations constituting defamation. Furthermore, Aurora asks for a
prominent public apology for the false and defamatory accusations made in Fake
News and for an equally prominent (i.e. not in a Comments section) opportunity
to respond.

You began Fake News with the sensational claim: The flood of fake news
this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign
that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing
Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining
faith in American democracy, and attributed this claim to independent
researchers who tracked the operation. Naked Capitalism is one of the accused
organizations in PropOrNots report, which, contrary to Fake News claim that the
report had not been published, was available on the Internet well before Fake News
ran. [http://www.propornot.com/p/the-list.html] This error should be corrected.
You identified and thus denigrated Naked Capitalism, one of the sites
targeted in the study as one of the right-wing sites across the Internet as they
portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and
preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The
effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote
fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia. You called upon Facebook
and Google to crack down on fake news, apparently by censoring Naked
Capitalism, because it is supposedly attack[ing] American democracy.
Your identification of Naked Capitalism as a fake news site and as an
agent for Russian propaganda designed to undermine American democracy is
defamatory per se. You accuse Naked Capitalism of spreading Russian-backed
phony news to outcompete traditional news organizations for audience. These
serious allegations have caused and will continue to cause great harm to Naked
Capitalism, including but not limited to damage to policy impact and reputation,
diversion of scarce reporting and managerial resources to respond to concerned
inquires and debunk this smear, loss of readers, and damage to the sites
profitability. Moreover, writers and editors associated with Naked Capitalism face
ridicule, emotional distress, loss of reputation, and risk to future career
advancement, including for example, difficulty passing background and security
checks
You did not provide even a single example of fake news allegedly
distributed or promoted by Naked Capitalism or indeed any of the 200 sites on the
PropOrNot blacklist. You provided no discussion or assessment of the credentials
or backgrounds of these so-called researchers (Clint Watts, Andrew Weisburd,
and J.M. Berger and the team at PropOrNot), and no discussion or analysis of the
methodology, protocol or algorithms such researchers may or may not have
followed. Fake News also erred in citing a monitoring report already published
on propornot.com

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byj_1ybuSGp_NmYtRF95VTJTeUk/view],
inaccurately depicting it as not available to the public: provided to The
Washington Post in advance of its public release. Aurora had not only seen the
site and its defamatory blacklist before your story appeared, but despite it being a
holiday week, had already had extensive discussions with close contacts about it.
Fake News described this PropOrNot organization (without evidence or
analysis) as a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military
and technology backgrounds and as one of two groups of independent
researchers. It was this report, NOT directly made available by the Post, but
found almost immediately on the PropOrNot website by journalists and other
readers of Fake News, not the work of the first team of researchers associated
with warontherocks.com, which identified Naked Capitalism as one of more than
200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election
season. You described a source as the executive director of PropOrNot but
afforded him/her anonymity allegedly to avoid being targeted by Russias legions
of skilled hackers. These are all the indicia of actual malice, i.e. knowing and/or
reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of your allegations against Naked
Capitalism.
On a widespread basis, highly regarded reporters and institutions that
monitor journalistic standards have criticized Fake News harshly for failing to
adhere to the most basic professional standards. A few of the numerous examples:
The New Yorker deemed PropOrNots blacklist, which the Post legitimized and
promoted, as propaganda.1 In The Hill, Patrick Maines, President of The Media
Institute, called Fake News perhaps the shoddiest piece of feature writing since
Rolling Stone published its blatantly false story about a campus rape at the
University of Virginia.2 Media watchdog FAIR lamented in its headline on
December 1, Why Are Media Outlets Still Citing Discredited Fake News

The Propaganda About Russia Propaganda, Adrien Chen, The New Yorker, December 1,
2016 (available at http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-propaganda-about-russianpropaganda)

Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post and the journalism its practicing, Patrick Maines,
The Hill, December 29. 2016

Blacklist?3 Many of these articles and tweets and specifically cite Naked
Capitalism as a clearly reputable site victimized by Fake News.4
The simplest internet search reveals propornot.com to be a recent creation,
shadowy at best, and with no credentials or bona fides that are capable of
independent verification and assessment for e.g. credibility.
Furthermore, you made no effort to contact Naked Capitalism for a
comment, rebuttal, or opportunity to respond even though you had ample time.
Indeed, you contacted RT by email and reported its response.
You have made damaging false accusations against Naked Capitalism.
Please immediately remove these from the web and provide an equivalent
opportunity to respond. Please see the attached concerning your obligation to
retain documents and electronically stored information relating to Fake News. I
look forward to hearing from you within three business days. Please contact me if
I can provide further information.

Sincerely,
/s/ James A. Moody
James A. Moody
Counsel to Aurora Advisors Incorporated
///
3

Why Are Media Outlets Still Citing Discredited Fake News Blacklist? FAIR, December 1,
2016 (available at http://fair.org/home/why-are-media-outlets-still-citing-discredited-fake-newsblacklist/)

For instance, from Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a
New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group, Ben Norton and Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
(available at https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-amccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/):
One of the most egregious examples is the groups inclusion of Naked Capitalism, the widely
respected left-wing site run by Wall Street critic Yves Smith. That site was named by Time
magazine as one of the best 25 Best Financial Blogs in 2011 and by Wired magazine as a crucial
site to follow for finance, and Smith has been featured as a guest on programs such as PBSs Bill
Moyers Show. Yet this cowardly group of anonymous smear artists, promoted by the
Washington Post, has now placed them on a blacklist of Russian disinformation.